BAL @ DAL
Baltimore Ravens at Dallas Cowboys at Maracanã Stadium.
Regular season · week 3 · Sunday, Sep 27, 4:25 PM ET
Baltimore Ravensat
Dallas CowboysEXPERIMENTAL
Maracanã Stadium
Simulation story
5 chapters · read from the published artifact› Loading the matchup model› Reading the outcome distribution from 10,000 simulated games› Preparing the score scenariosPress Play to step through what the model expects, chapter by chapter, or read the report below.
Simulation
What our model expects
10,000 simulated games · model nfl-regular-season-public-v1
Projected score
BAL 27 — 26 DAL
the middle of our simulated outcomes, not a call on the exact final
Win chance
BAL 58.7% · DAL 38.4%
how often each side won in 10,000 simulations · ties 2.9%
Total points (both teams)
53
8 in 10 simulations landed between 36 and 70
DAL winning margin
-2
a minus means BAL wins by that much · 8 in 10 between -19 and 15
Model details
From the margin-of-victory Elo win head, published exactly as evaluated on held-out 2006–2021 — no shrink toward 50% is applied, and no claim to out-predict the sportsbook market is made. Generated 2026-09-24T19:52:17Z under model nfl-regular-season-public-v1 and frozen pre-kickoff; every forecast is settled against the official result.
Projected scorecard
expected statistical summaries · not one simulated gameBAL 27 — 26 DALwin chance BAL 58.7% · DAL 38.4%total 53 (36–70)margin -2
BAL
Likely TD scorers
Derrick Henry 75.2% · available role uncertain
Zay Flowers 38.7% · questionable
Mark Andrews 26.0% · available role uncertain
Passing
Lamar Jackson 243 pass yds (129–409) · available role uncertain
Rushing leaders
Derrick Henry 80 rush yds (25–185) · available role uncertain
Lamar Jackson 14 rush yds (1–65) · available role uncertain
Receiving leaders
Zay Flowers 5 rec · 78 yds · questionable
Mark Andrews 4 rec · 43 yds · available role uncertain
Rashod Bateman 3 rec · 30 yds · available role uncertain
DAL
Likely TD scorers
Javonte Williams 53.3% · available role uncertain
CeeDee Lamb 46.7% · available role uncertain
George Pickens 31.5% · available role uncertain
Passing
Dak Prescott 225 pass yds (126–366) · available role uncertain
Rushing leaders
Javonte Williams 50 rush yds (13–125) · available role uncertain
Dak Prescott 7 rush yds (0–44) · available role uncertain
Receiving leaders
CeeDee Lamb 5 rec · 67 yds · available role uncertain
George Pickens 4 rec · 49 yds · available role uncertain
Ryan Flournoy 3 rec · 31 yds · available role uncertain
pass interceptions · First/last/2+ touchdown — withheld, with the exact bar each failed
- pass interceptions: RESEARCH_ONLY
- First/last/2+ touchdown: DISABLED — no ordering model and no calibration receipt of their own; never derived from anytime probabilities
Range
How wide the outcomes are
the 10th to 90th percentile of each team's simulated score
| Team | Low (10th) | Projected | High (90th) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baltimore Ravens | 15 | 27 | 39 |
| Dallas Cowboys | 13 | 26 | 37 |
Exact score
The likeliest final scores
from an event-based simulation of touchdowns and field goals, solved onto the median margin and total above
| Score (BAL – DAL) | Chance |
|---|---|
| 24–27 | 0.60% |
| 20–23 | 0.60% |
| 23–20 | 0.58% |
| 30–27 | 0.57% |
| 27–24 | 0.56% |
| 27–30 | 0.53% |
No single scoreline is likely — these are the most common of hundreds. The projected score above is derived from the medians and answers a different question: the middle of the distribution, not its most common point.
Key numbers
How often it lands on 3, 7, 10 or 14
football's margins pile up on those four — this is the one thing a normal-draw model cannot show you
| Margin | This game | Last 3 regular seasons |
|---|---|---|
| Decided by exactly 3 | 9.6% | 14.2% |
| Decided by exactly 7 | 6.1% | 8.3% |
| Decided by exactly 10 | 5.2% | 4.2% |
| Decided by exactly 14 | 4.6% | 4.4% |
| Any of the four | 25.6% | 31.1% |
The right-hand column is what actually happened across 816 regular-season games (2023, 2024, 2025) — the same finals this engine was fitted to. It gets the shape right, with 3 the most common margin by a distance, and it is not calibrated to the number: it puts less weight on 3 and more on 10 than those seasons did.
BAL touchdowns
3.0
DAL touchdowns
2.8
BAL field goals
2.0
DAL field goals
1.9
Tied after regulation
3.5%
Comparison
Us versus the sportsbooks
two independent reads, shown side by side
No current sportsbook capture covers this game.
Player projections · 18 modelled
The player board
Every modelled player, with his availability. Players listed out carry no volume projection.
Every receiving family for one player on one row, ranked by expected receptions.
| Player | Team | Availability | Receptions (10th–90th) | Rec yards (10th–90th) | TD chance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CeeDee Lamb | DAL | role uncertain | 5 (2–11) | 67 (27–134) | 46.7% |
| Zay Flowers | BAL | questionable | 5 (2–11) | 78 (32–156) | 38.7% |
| George Pickens | DAL | role uncertain | 4 (1–9) | 49 (18–104) | 31.5% |
| Mark Andrews | BAL | role uncertain | 4 (1–9) | 43 (15–92) | 26.0% |
| Ryan Flournoy | DAL | role uncertain | 3 (1–7) | 31 (8–72) | 24.2% |
| Rashod Bateman | BAL | role uncertain | 3 (1–6) | 30 (6–73) | 22.5% |
| Javonte Williams | DAL | role uncertain | 2 (0–6) | 22 (3–55) | 53.3% |
| Jake Ferguson | DAL | role uncertain | 2 (0–6) | 22 (3–57) | 24.7% |
| Derrick Henry | BAL | role uncertain | 1 (0–3) | 10 (0–37) | 75.2% |
| Justice Hill | BAL | role uncertain | 1 (0–3) | 10 (0–37) | 19.2% |
| Chris Moore | BAL | questionable | 1 (0–4) | 17 (0–52) | 12.3% |
| Devontez Walker | BAL | role uncertain | 1 (0–3) | 7 (0–36) | 7.7% |
Families not shown, and the exact bar each failed (2)
- pass interceptions: RESEARCH_ONLY
- First/last/2+ touchdown: DISABLED — no ordering model and no calibration receipt of their own; never derived from anytime probabilities
Scoring outlooktop 6 of 18 by TD chance · full list in the board’s TD tab
- 75.2% Derrick Henry · BAL · available role uncertain
- 53.3% Javonte Williams · DAL · available role uncertain
- 46.7% CeeDee Lamb · DAL · available role uncertain
- 38.7% Zay Flowers · BAL · questionable
- 31.5% George Pickens · DAL · available role uncertain
- 26.0% Mark Andrews · BAL · available role uncertain
Anytime-scorer probability means scoring a touchdown — never throwing one. Void if the player does not play; questionable players carry their state above.
Reading key
What these numbers mean
- Projected score
- The middle outcome across every simulated game — not a prediction of the exact final.
- Win chance
- How often each side won across the simulations, after the calibration described above.
- 80% range
- Eight in ten simulated games landed inside this band. Real games land outside it too.
- pp (percentage points)
- The plain difference between two percentages. A gap is a difference, not an advantage.
- Experimental
- Published while its out-of-sample record is still accumulating. Every forecast is frozen before kickoff and graded against the official result.
Provenance
Where this came from
- model
- nfl-regular-season-public-v1 v2
- simulations
- 10,000
- input hash
- d92c58e4e857c461
- generated
- 2026-09-24T19:52:17Z
- kickoff
- 2026-09-27T20:25Z
- state
- UPCOMING
Player-family model provenance (4 published)
- Rushing yards: Share-level model: cleared every bar when re-tested on 2014–2021 (14,502 player-games) — a second look at seasons examined once before, not a blind test. Each week's forecast is frozen before the first kickoff and graded; its blind 2026 record is still accumulating (111 graded player-games so far).
- Receiving yards: Share-level model: cleared every bar when re-tested on 2014–2021 (27,134 player-games) — a second look at seasons examined once before, not a blind test. Each week's forecast is frozen before the first kickoff and graded; its blind 2026 record is still accumulating (200 graded player-games so far).
- Receptions: Share-level model: cleared every bar when re-tested on 2014–2021 (27,134 player-games) — a second look at seasons examined once before, not a blind test. Each week's forecast is frozen before the first kickoff and graded; its blind 2026 record is still accumulating (200 graded player-games so far).
- Anytime touchdown: Opportunity touchdown model: cleared every bar on a blind test of 2014–2021 (35,128 player-games never used to build it). Probabilities condition on playing — a player who does not play settles void. Each week's forecast is frozen before the first kickoff and graded; its blind 2026 record is still accumulating (267 graded player-games so far).
Our win chances come from a team rating that weights how decisively teams win. Tested on 4,281 past games it had never seen (2006–2021), it scored 0.629 on log loss (lower is better) — better than our previous rating's 0.642 and a coin flip's 0.693, but short of the sportsbooks' own odds at 0.610. It has NOT been shown to beat the sportsbook market. Where our win and margin ratings disagree on the favourite, the previous rating is used for that game. The 2026 season evaluation still runs under bars frozen in August, so every forecast stays experimental.
Educational and paper-only — not betting advice.
More
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